Well, I recently lost, like, 50% of my credibility as an intellectual as I stopped smoking. So I guess I am now somewhere in between both ends.

If these are two of the most powerful men on Earth, it’s surely time to jump on the next SpaceX rocket to Mars.

That is a weird way to spell “get out the guillotines”

There is actually a huge thing to consider with any kind of authoritarian system ideologically: Basically without fail, they will have a “rules for thee, not for me” dynamic behind the scenes. Make abortion illegal? It will still be possible to skirt the rules for the powerful, and pervert the right to control your own body as a woman into the privilege of powerful people - mostly men - to decide if they allow a pregnancy to continue.

Authoritarianism lives, psychologically, from having the people on top, the ones “worthy” in the eyes of ideology, being able to bend or fully circumvent the rules. Even today, this is clearly visible in how rich people, and even more so rich organisations, are treated differently in front of a court, where proper consequences seem to be an exception instead of the rule. This also shows in more fundamental, everyday mechanics of society, think of how the violence monopoly of the state more often than not rests on the tacit acceptance of excessive police violence. Where often, cops and paramilitaries in police roles within states are developing a self-image and identity, along the lines of “to protect society from itself and its horrendous violence, I must become a violent badass” - consciously or unconsciously enjoying the violence and control they can enact, or turning their heads when their colleagues do it, and reserving for themselves and their in-group the privilege to do so.

So, having someone like Trump, a clear narcissistic rapist, being both openly against abortion rights in his political platform while personally holding the belief of abortions being allowed, is no real contradiction at all. He can rest assured that if in power, he would have the privilege to force both consensual mistresses and victims of his assaults to have abortions anyway.

Exactly, it’s not like Trump himself is a fundamental Christian with misguided but deeply held convictions. He is a narcissist that wants adoration, power and to be in a special position where you can dodge consequences.

Germany, don’t watch TV, have adblock on all devices - I guess I do still see advertisements on billboards when I go outside, but those are a bit different.

This is a lot worse, IMO, at least wiping your ass is a good idea - douching is just an all-around bad idea outside of very special circumstances.

Aw, a lot more tame than I expected. But I guess I understand why I’ve never heard of it, I’ve never seen that brand before in my life.

As someone outside the US, and someone who hasn’t seen advertisements in a long, long time - outside of memes that make fun of the shittiest ones - what is this about? I am always curious about how ad culture evolves, and having a bear literally talking about his shit-encrusted ass, on television no less, would be a rather fascinating escalation of the more publicly shown ad-culture to take into account.

Don’t fuck with mankind - one of your siblings sinks one measly ocean liner, and they will boil the planet and themselves just to eradicate every last one of you.

I ran an instance for a while out of curiosity a few years back - building the database seemed to work fine and appeared like a good idea, had a lot of fun to see the connections with other servers and my crawler filling holes of unknown spaces. But I think the search algorithm itself was (most likely is) not sophisticated enough, it just did not give relevant results often enough, and it was extremely vulnerable to very simple SEO tactics to push trash to the top.

Polls are shit and only snapshots of an overall vibe-like probability - but this is still a very, very good sign.

I hope the people that were adamant about claiming that criticising Biden and urging him to drop out was in some way “bot”-behaviour or traitorous, or just claimed by tankie accelerationists, or whatever, realise that it was more often than not really based on concern of Biden not being able to win. The energy that suddenly got unleashed in this election campaign in just a few days and these new polls clearly show, that there was something to the concerns we had with Biden.

Not saying you were stupid or something for having the perspective you had, there were arguments to be had after all, incumbency bonus and the risk of having a new candidate so close to the election were things to be considered. But from what I witnessed, the discourse got really toxic at times and from at least some people. No, not everyone that wanted to replace Biden was a useful idiot or someone acting in bad faith. There were clear reasons, and in this case, things are very much starting to look like they were valid and good reasons, too. Enthusiasm is really fucking important in election campaigns, and Biden was a black hole sucking any enthusiasm out of any potential campaign.

Of course, there’s still work to be had ahead. But things are looking a lot better right now, and maybe another Trump presidency, this time with his fascist cronies being prepared fto properly enact fundamental changes for the worse, can be avoided yet. I’m still fairly pessimistic for the future, and would advise anyone to organise along radical leftist lines (IWW, SRA and local mutual help groups look to me like some of the best organisations at the moment in the US, speaking as a European outsider who may not have the full picture) and connect in networks that are prepared to react to the repression and chaos still on the horizon, but getting a few more years to do that organising while the global crises continue to march on is worth a lot.

That is actually one of the reasons (have to emphasise: among others, mainly delaying more open repression) I have been advocating heavily for people to turn out to vote for Democrats as a German communist myself. I know it’s cynical, I know I have it easy to think about it like this, not living in the US myself, all valid criticisms. But I genuinely think any Dem president winning against Trump might bait the most fascist elements in the US into really stupid violence they are not organised and prepared for. They think they are, but they are not.

I genuinely think more chaos and conflict is in the cards in the next decades, globally, no matter what is done and who is in charge (unless miracles happen and systemic change is pushed somehow within the status quo, I can see no avenue for it at the moment, though). So to me, that would be provoking fascists into doing something really stupid, too early, and out of a position of weakness, that will leave them weakened and yield a lot of ground to the left overall, making organisation for radical change easier.

No guarantees it’s going to happen and end up playing out like that, of course, details are always fuzzy and there’s no crystal ball. Same goes for my assumption that violence and global chaos beyond what people have been used to in the last 70 years will be inevitable in the decades to come (climate catastrophe, the end of neoliberal consensus worldwide, continuing crisis of capitalism with proletarisation and vanishing of the middle class in western nations), although I am a lot more certain of that development as a broad trend that has already begun, IMO.

At this point, it’s all just about delaying the repression and concentration of power under a Trump presidency, as well as trying to slow down the climate catastrophe as much as possible on top of that. Things won’t get better any time soon, it’s simply not the historical situation and dynamic at the moment, but every year to organise people for radical alternatives for when the global collapse progresses further is valuable.

It would have taken some big, unexpected developments for him to win at this stage. Especially after the failed assassination attempt invigorated and united Trump’s cult further.

That’s something I think some people just missed when Biden dropping out was debated. Of course, the other potential picks were polling behind him at that point. But he was showing clear signs that he had peaked, and would only be able to fight not to drop further. His most powerful argument had been not being Trump - which any candidate can wield. And any candidate with charisma and the ability to speak, debate and campaign has a lot of room to move up, whereas Biden was fighting not to move down.

Your last point is actually not a bad analysis - but it is missing that the ones operating their propaganda and troll farms already also control the violence monopoly. And both entities also use violence where they deem it practical.

A brave and true republican boy, who got corrupted away from his family by the antifa deep state complex, he would have been such a great person, if only his parents had homeschooled him without interference from the communist atheists, and were allowed to hit him more as a child 😢

So, this is 100% speculative rambling at this point, but as a gut feeling on my part that can be proven wrong: I get the feeling it might have been someone from a Republican family, possibly shitty family psychology-wise, registered as Republican for his families sake but got f’d up by the pressure within his personal relationships and the state of the world, who radicalised himself on the internet.

I don’t remember him mentioning the exact year, it’s been ages and I was a child still when he was still alive, but I know it was before the Machtergreifung, because he told it as having been a rally during an election campaign, eerily fitting, I guess.

Two main effects are to be expected: More people leaning towards him, that might not have gone to the polls out of whatever reason (lacking enthusiasm for example) will be more fired up to go vote, and his base will be more fired up to support him in grassroots campaigning. Also, some undecided voters will likely switch from the martyrdom narrative.